Guild Wars 2

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger isn’t expected to do burst damage. By sustained, we mean that the Ranger should excel at surviving (resilient) through burst while still doing enough damage over time to take the opponent down.

Which is exactly what ANY profession does when it’s not doing something better.

In what fashion is the Ranger actually good at this? because your basically saying doing good DPS and getting the job done promptly makes a profession not a “skirmisher”…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Want to solve rolling? Add a vote on the next Fractal like the vote for dungeon paths.

Propagating non-random, player-determined scenario selection to all three tiers instead of just the first tier isn’t getting rid of it…

Wanze.8410:

Nike.2631:

To a Good Home

First of all, this is way too complicated to implement (2 stacks of each item).

Fortunately we have these things called computers to handle minor bookkeeping, and second the WHOLE POINT is that if you buy it this way you intend to use it, not sit on it .

Then i dont see who benefits from it. It wont ban flippers or speculators from the game, if that is your intent.

Its not, and it never was – it’s to create competitive pressure, to introduce a class of sellers whom you cannot simply buy-out to eliminate their offers.

And for any crafting material, it would still give me the possibility to craft something out of it to turn a profit.

That is also deliberate. It provides incentive to move items through the production cycle, buying cheaper to a good home materials to sell in a more refined state.

As transactions would still be anonymous, no relationship will be established between buyer and seller.

The sale itself is the relationship. It not to start up being pen pals .

If you care about your item not being bought by flippers/speculators, just post a sell listing and dont sell to the highest bidder. That way, most of the time, it wont be bought by a flipper/speculator.

There is a world of difference between “most of the time” and “never”. Further it adds an additional check against market manipulation.

Just because you seem to have moral issues with selling your stuff to someone who benefits from it by flipping, speculating, this is an awfully complicated system and i dont think it will be frequently used.

You and I have very different scales if you consider a pair of check boxes “awfully complicated” .

Most people that sell their loot to the highest bidder do so because they want a quick gold return, they wont sell it for even less while having to even do one more click to check the good home box.

To a Good Home is not intended to serve “most people”. It’s intended to provide options so the Trading Post can better serve more people than it does now. If you don’t approve of economic PvP, your options are relent or not participate at all. This provides at least a little bit of a middle ground.

It’s been suggested that Rangers could gain various buffs called for stowing their pets.

Thoughts?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Before things get out of hand, I want to address the aspect idea so we can move on. First of all, it’s a great idea, but there are many current issues with the profession that need to be addressed first. Our priorities to make the pet a more viable option will likely remain higher than giving an option to “permastow” the pet.

Then I suggest interacting with some of the other approaches put forward.

Here, here’s a tiny one that doesn’t involve AI coding at all .

We recognize there are a number of issues with the pet AI and general functionality, so that is something that will come first. Rangers are first and foremost a pet class, but they are also great skirmishers and some of the best sustained long range damage.

I’ve no lasting heartbreak with Rangers being defined as a pet class – as long as the resulting mechanics are less frustrating. But this phrase you keep using… “the best sustained long range damage”… I do not think it means, what you think it means .

That said, if you would like to consider discussing the aspect idea, I ask that you start a thread outside of the CDI to brainstorm.

Where is can be safely ignored like so many other posts over the last year in the Ranger Forums. ((sigh))

Edit: Per your request I’ve launched a separate thread.

DevonCarver.5370:

What if, instead of NPC defenders, you couldn’t put siege down in Stonemist, but there were specific defensive siege pieces in critical areas that the defending team could build? Would that serve the same purpose?

I would simplify: Defenders are barred from placing siege gear inside the inner area (the outer ring remains a free-for-all). Then introduce an (expensive) Armory upgrade that adds the control point and simultaneously deploys all the appropriate siege gear for the innermost area. Taking the Armory control point disables the siege gear, making it an attractive but not mandatory detour. This also eliminates the hassle of having to constantly refresh siege and it closes the door on the ever popular trolling/spy tactic of wasting supply on unneeded siege in some useless corner.

Indeed, building the various secondary control points would give a real sense of urgency both to the defenders and to attackers wanting to strike before they have to deal with a Giant stomping on their heads while they take the Lord’s room .

It’s in line with reinforcing walls and doors, except it adds complexity instead of big numbers.

John Smith.4610:

Seriously though, I’ve never seen a compelling argument that making TP items account bound would be anything but devastatingly bad for this game and its players. There are of course many biases in any setting, especially a forum setting, but you know that my goal is to make the best possible game.

Any comment on the following purely optional system?

To a Good Home
Add a check box when posting items that indicate the item must be sold to “a good home”. When purchased via TP this item becomes account bound. For items that stack it is place in a separate stack that combines only with similar account bound items.

When buying via TP a check box allows ‘to a good home’ items to be viewed (the default would be to filter them out. the check box is to opt in to see them). This way customers are less likely to accidentally buy something they cannot re-sell/flip.

• People selling in ‘to a good home’ mode should expect to get less money for their items – after all, the only people who can buy them are people who intend to actually use them. But they also get the knowledge that their goods are not being juggled for profit.
• For buyers who intend to use the item it creates a parallel market with lower price and a direct from initial seller relationship.
• For flippers it moves a percentage of their market into a parallel track. Then we find out if the people actually harvesting/getting the initial drop really care about the so called “service”… Do they want to sell fast to the broadest liquidity, or slower to people who will use what they are buying?

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to pivot to something that Luna mentioned early in the thread, the idea of a more complex fight for Stonemist.

Would it make Stonemist feel too difficult to capture if the assaulting team had to capture and hold 3 capture points?
…
Do any of you think this version of Stonemist would be an improvement or does it not really make any positive changes in your mind?

It’s almost there.

What I would do is continue to have one critical point – the Lord’s Room. That location solely determines the outcome of the attack. But then I would add two (possibly 3) substantial defenses to the lord’s room. First, a Legendary creature that helps in the defense of the room. The second, a bunch of fixed, player-operable high quality siege equipment.

For each of these defenses you add another control point elsewhere in the castle. Seizing them removes the matching defenses from the room.

The point will always be to cotrol the Lord’s room, and an assaulting realm can choose to go directly for the throat. But doing so means eating a bunch of siege in the face and having to deal with something on the scale of a Giant, or maybe a High Priest of the Mists with an annoying tendency to rez the Lord up to once a minute until the Priest is wiped off the field.

Or the assaulting group can go contest these points and remove the additional obstacles for as long as they hold them. Hold the Chapel and the Priest de-spawns. Hold the Armory and the Seige Weapons become inert.

With the Priest/Giant/What-have-you being an NPC, it will present a challenge even if no defenders are present. While the siege weapons specifically require the defending server be present to use them.

Aye.8392:

3.) This doesn’t truly fit the above proposal, but as a fun thing — the opposite of the Urban Fractal. Let us fight as humans defending the wall and defending the boss at the end fight against the Charr warbands. I can’t help it, I’m a Separatist at heart

I support this fractal. Make it so.

We’ve had an example of “tower defense” style play with the Marionette. Take the exact same map and flip the roles, falling back at fixed intervals. You can even have the famously mocked line “RRRrrrruuaaaahhhhhh!” act as some kind of amazing Elite Uber-Shout that buffs the players to the gills before they go out in a blaze of glory fighting for Ascalon to their dying breath. You can even use the existing “outnumbered” buff from WvW so that players don’t tank gear damage. Hold the final courtyard against rapidly increasing waves. After 2.5 minutes you’ve secured the right to move onto the next fractal and get the outnumbered buff – its an actual fight to the death with the reward being a good drop table on the mobs so fighting as hard as you can until dead is actually worth it instead of a time sink.

Is it wrong I want the option to poke around in the Mossman’s shack after we beat him?

I’m a big fan of the Norn. Mossman is a fascinating character to me. Why is he in a swamp? Why is he so cool he has multiple Spirit Forms? What’s his Legend?

Oh, and how can I get the “Morph-into-Random-Spirit-Form” Elite Skill? …Because a I WANTSES IT !

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Nike.2631:

Lone Wolf: While your pet is stowed you gain a +25% bonus to Power and Condition Damage.

Change that to “Revert the damageloss caused by the pet” and I’m in.

Any earlier version of that proposal tried to do that with a straight damage buff, but that doesn’t actually work due to the differences in how Power-based and Condition damage are delivered. Plus pets are clearly intended to provide non-DPS contributions to Ranger gameplay, and “cashing them out for nothing but Deeps” loses some of that nuance.

The other thing that has to be acknowledge is that Aspects or Lone Wolf shouldn’t be better than… or even equal to… the advantages pets provide. They’re basically saying “I’ll pay a small loss in effectiveness to get rid of the annoyance of watching Fluffy die over, and over, and over…”

It should be a reluctant alternative, not the definitive solution to bad pet AI.

spoj.9672:

Make the dialogue run in the background in such a way that it doesnt halt progress while waiting for a conversation to complete. Make fractal objectives clues to the lore. Basically just avoid timegating the content for cutscenes and lore, but you can still add it in. Whenever I play the living story stuff for the first time I turn off my music and turn on npc chat so I can see and hear the dialogue. If it is simply background stuff then I can turn off ingame sound, play music and it doesnt interrupt my enjoyment of the content when replaying.

I agree voice-overs are a great way to deliver lore in parallel with the central action.

Perhaps add a few “Curious Object”s to the maps – click on them to ‘scan’ them, launching additional optional voice overs as Dessa or one of her assistants reports back on the analysis. Veteran teams can just stroll by. And if a lone newbie clicks one because they are curious, it doesn’t derail play. As a general framework it would also reinforce that you are an explorer-pointman for a larger team, and that the folks back at Mistlock Observatory want you to succeed .

Romo.3709:

How about Story Mode fractals, where you could pick a fractal you want to experience. Then upon arriving to said fractal we could experience the story behind thus level hence learning more about the history and idea behind the design of each and every fractal. To make it actually rewarding we could have a achievement system in place for each level, so everyone would play it at least once. And maybe a reward at the end (30s should be sufficient as it would be much shorter than a regular dungeon story mode) and some experience. It would also help new players get a hang of fractals a bit more understanding the layout and mechanics behind every level.

This is similar to the practice mode discussed earlier, though it adds some nice lore/flavor to the concept.

I like it, as long as the rewards don’t turn it into a farm (with your proposed numbers looking fairly safe).

The Lost Witch.7601:

The floppy

Players can get an item that saves their fractal progress. We’ll call it a floppy for now.

I’m still digesting this, but I have to say right up front the name is so incredibly hilarious that I almost don’t care what it does, it needs to be in the game!

More serious consideration to follow.

Romo.3709:

This is not an exploit in any way.

Bullcrap. People aren’t re-rolling because they like the scenery in the swamp. They aren’t there to drop off the Mossman’s mail. Its done because the time spent re-rolling is considered less than the time/difficulty it saves by doing it.

GoldenTruth.2853:

If Anet makes it so you can’t reroll they need to make sure that there is a way to have the appropriate AR while underwater. Currently you lose the head slot’s AR and very few people waste time making ascended/legendary underwater weapons (10 more AR).

This could be solved, as several people have proposed, through account AR.

This sounds like a problem that needs to be addressed on it’s own merits, regardless of if anything is done about re-rolling the first scenario.

Romo.3709:

I don’t understand what is so wrong with rolling. It doesn’t hurt the game in any way.

I think “manipulating the system to reduce the amount of time to reach rewards” is just about the fundamental definition of exploit. No exploit ‘hurts the game’ if you’re willing to ignore that . It’s not a desirable to permit it anywhere else in the game. Its not desirable that it be left in place here.

Just because “you don’t have to use the exploit…” doesn’t mean a designer shouldn’t ruthlessly hunt them down and exterminate them .

Aye.8392:

Is doing away with the re-roll something that is really wanted or needed? If so, why? It seems like a forced control step where none is really needed. Most of my teams don’t reroll, but some few do; in thinking about it it’s mostly high-level groups that choose to re-roll, low levels just play what is presented. Is it truly an issue?

When the point of the entire environment is facing random challenges, having the first 1/3 not be random is weaksauce.

Its a loophole, and closing it is relatively trivial.

timmyf.1490:

Nike.2631:

I honestly don’t see ‘re-rolling’ for first fractal as all that hard to kill.

Charge each player 1g to enter Fractals. Each player receives an additional 1g at the completion of the first Fractal. (Kicking is disabled during the first Fractal?)

I’m gonna pass on the thousand Support tickets all saying “I got DC’d and lost my gold” .

The choke point is the person opening the fractal – there is literally no reason they need to be allowed to “pick up the die and toss it again” you can nail the die to the table until the scenario has been played out. Without opening a can of worms relating to the larger party dynamic and the antics that surround kicking.

I honestly don’t see ‘re-rolling’ for first fractal as all that hard to kill.

Arrange things so each account holds in memory what tier one fractal you last generated by starting a run. When you finish a Tier 1 fractal you launched it becomes blank/null, ready to receive a randomly generated new scenario the next time you start a run. But, as long as there is an old scenario waiting there, that is the only Fractal you will ever see when you are the person who opens the initial gate from Mistlock Observatory. New/first-time characters are assigned a random scenario from a list of tier one fractals that does not include the Swamp as a possible result (other troublesomely fast tier 1 scenarios introduced later can also be excluded). This prevents recruiting newbies solely for the purpose of trying to game their initial roll.

Done. Re-rolling is dead. Long live facing the challenges presented.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

One way to simplify the range of mechanics required and FX workload would be to make Aspects based on pet families rather than individual pets.

Aspect of Arachnids
Aspect of Canines
Aspect of Devourers
Aspect of Drakes
Aspect of Felines
Aspect of Moas
Aspect of Porcines
Aspect of Raptors
Aspect of Ursines

And if stowing/Aspect are allowed underwater (not a given, actually), add~
Aspect of Armor Fish
Aspect of Cnidaria (jellyfish)
Aspect of Sharks

For I while I’ve been suggesting replacing the Skirmishing 5-point minor trait with what amounts to a universal aspect~

Lone Wolf: While your pet is stowed you gain a +25% bonus to Power and Condition Damage.

Moshari.8570:

Proposal Functionality
If I can earn 1.5 gold for a 15 minute run of COF or HOTW, I should earn 4x that for a 1 hour run of fractals. Gold reward should be commensurate with the length of time it takes to complete an individual fractal.

If I could score best-in-slot items randomly from even 100 runs through CoF I might think there was a comparison to be made here. But there’s not. Gold is not the only currency in the game, and trying to turn everything into a gold earning competition just adds that many more faucets and debases coin that much more. Five fractal-specific currencies. FIVE. Yes, we need more ways to spend them, but we need to also not ignore that they exist in the rush to throw ourselves on the tender mercies of the Trading Post. Fractals are a separate track. Any number of Dungeon-delvers will tell you the grass is greener on the Fractals side of the fence and that they are the ones being wronged by the differences.

cranked.3812:

Nike.2631

While I agree with your sentiment on the Bomb and Clown-Car fights, I’ll point out that the Pressure Plate battle is one of the few places in the entire game where glass-cannons are not rewarded out of all proportion with any other build. It’s not that the fight is hard per se, but that the encounter actually calls for 2 characters to be able to withstand a bit of a beating without relying on dodge-spam. That also makes it one of the few places where Support can make a difference. Knockbacks, interrupts, mass-Aegis, strong healing… If the enemies weren’t Drege this would also be a amazing fight for anyone with AoE blinds.

The problem with your reasoning is the game is designed around dodging as a form of damage mitigation. You can’t create content that suddenly goes against game design and then make it only the beginning of a larger part where you actually need to dodge the rest of the time.

If you want a game with more depth than dodge-spam and ‘zerker-uber-alles, I think you can most definitely introduce challenges that don’t crumble under the repeated application of our much beloved on-demand 2 seconds of godmode. The third floor of the Nightmare Tower and perma-Toxin was not an accident. If dodging was meant to be the only form of mitigation the Vitality and Toughness stats wouldn’t exist. Admittedly many people act like they don’t exist…

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

While its easy to become damage-obsessed in this game, the stat boost that needs to appear in the same line with the Trap-enhancing Traits is Condition Duration, not Condition Damage.

Look at the traps ~
Flame Trap: Set a trap that burns foes.
Frost Trap: Set a trap that chills foes.
Spike Trap: Set a trap that bleeds and cripples foes.
Viper’s Nest: Set a trap that poisons foes.

While damage is good, duration enhances all the effects of Ranger Traps.

The simplest swap is move Condition Duration to Skirmishing, Crit Damage to Marksmanship, a name that certainly suggest pin-point accuracy and an arrow in the eye… a.k.a. a crit that really hurts

Marksmanship leverages Condition Duration through Opening Strike (vulnerability) and the Keen Edge (bleeds) and Preadtor’s Instinct (cripple) traits. The Traits could be moved… Predator’s Instinct sounds like it may be more skirmishing-themed to begin with. While the swap would hurt Opening Strike, I think many would embrace a clearly defined “This is the Power Ranger Line” providing both Power & Crit Damage. This swap would also leave Condition Damage in Wilderness Survival, a line already nominated as the home for improved Poison Condition themed effects…

If you were to move Condition Damage to Skirmishing, rather than swap Crit Damage, I would suggest a new stat bonus be added to Wildeness Survival called “Persistence”. Persistence would give a -1% incoming Condition Duration per trait point (max -30%). While not an effect considered for trait lines when the game launched, it has proven immensely popular for defensive-minded build via food buffs, and would give Rangers a unique alternative to condition removal, an area they could definitely use some help with.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Please do not make the pet optional in any capacity.

The ranger as a beastmaster is great, and I love having a partner with me no matter what my build is.

And because you don’t need choices, no one else should be allowed to have them.

How incredibly gracious of you.

Prysin.8542:

Sorry, but let me correct you in some areas;

You are welcome to disagree, but others can judge whether you made a case for correction being involved .

Resilient =/= being able to stand in one spot and facetank every single point of damage coming at you.

My ears, what a strange notion! Its like you think I’m oblivious to the contribution of dodging . “Resilient” to many people, myself included, means ‘not dead after it all goes down’. It is the complete package.

Ranger has Medium armor, Medium HP and a metric ton of evades. Timing, insight of enemy attacks, Resilience is simply the ability to hang on even in a very tough time, and rangers certainly have that ability without the shadow of a doubt.

Your ‘metric ton of evades’ is not exactly a uniquely “Ranger-ish” proposition. Are we to assume that all class design philosophies blurbs start with “The X is a resilient class…” as outlined in the hilarious class Mad-Libs seen a few posts back?

If the Devs are going to lead of with that as the very first point in their outline, it needs to be kinda noteworthy. Rangers did rely on Dodge/vigor-like effects. Then they downscaled that mechanic across the entire game and guess which class took it on the chin the worst as a result? I didn’t feel like harping on this fact in my post, but hey, if you want to shine a spotlight on Resilience: Then & Now, I don’t think it exactly helps the All’s-Well-with-the-Ranger cause…

Ranger’s CC ability is without the shadow of a doubt, much greater then most other professions.

Woo-hoo! Like “sustained damage” once again we’re amazing at something that DOESN’T MATTER. Every significant NPC in the game Lives behind a wall of Defiance stacks, and as mentioned, the professions most capable of smashing face have cooldowns on their stun-breaks or immunities that make a laughingstock of CC, not just for Rangers but for everyone.

As a Ranger player, you must get tired of being the king of broken mechanics, yes?

The ranger are indeed in need of a lot of QoL improvements along with several rebalances, and minor fixes. In scandinavian language (or rather danish/norwegian) we got a saying; Mange bekker små blir én stor å.
Translating this you get; Many small streams become one large river.
This is probably the best description of the ranger profession. There is no need for massive overturns, however a large number of small fixes collaborate to create a huge mess which plague the profession.

To be clear, even in this somewhat ill-tempered review, my goals are not some sort of complete re-write. On the whole I think the worst ranger issues can be fixed with little more than turning 2-3 minor traits we have now into permanent class features, a light pass on the weapons to make them less schitzophrenic mixes of Power-based damage and condition damage, and push a few traits around to align them with the lines that make the most sense.

The things that hurt rangers the most are global issues: Ranged damage it punished excessively. Defiance annihilates Control as a meaningful role. Mob AI is juvenile. These are not just Ranger Problems they are Guild Wars 2 Problems… The ranger just makes a career out of showing up at the intersection with every one of them .

In an nearby parallel universe where you must all endure the hellish notion that I have moderator powers, I’d be typing up a standardized response to cut and paste from to the effect~

Sorry, but your recent post was found to not fall sufficiently within the current topic and has been removed to preserve the focus of the discussion. Please consider re-posting your thoughts as a separate thread where it will be directly topical.
This is not an infraction.

So count your blessing you live in this universe. I’d be a dreadful tyrant .

DarcShriek.5829:

Unless she becomes a martyr.

“Martyr is just another word for ‘my enemies die’.”

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

Lets take this point by point.

A Resilient Profession. The Ranger is a medium armor, medium hit point profession with poor native condition removal/conversion and with a major portion of its functionality partitioned into the hands of a flawed AI where it can be destroyed independently. They’re maybe not as bad off as Elementalists, but the reality is still they are bad at one of the things the Developers think they’re good at. Yes, Rangers can — though MASSIVE trait investment — cover these flaws in a few highly specialized builds, but as a default position for the profession as a whole this statement is so untrue as to be ludicrous.

Excellence in Skirmishing. If “skirmish” means something along the lines of “mobile conflict from range” …nobody is good at it. The underlying damage co-efficients for ranged attacks are brutally punitive and doubly abusive considering most melee attacks also cleave, while Rangers have to trait for piercing. Ranger’s have modest access to knockbacks, immobilizes, cripples, and swiftness — all completely overshadowed by melee-oriented opponents’ easy access to gap closers and CC removal/immunity. And when the fight does inevitably turn to melee, the Ranger’s ability to reestablish position is limited at best, hampered by poor counters to the CC melee-based professions routinely employ to ensure their attacks land.

Supporting Themselves and Their Allies. This may come as a surprise to anyone other than most people who play the game, but Rangers are not considered an amazing Support class. While Spotter, Frost Spirit, and some shared Fury skills are welcome contributions in the one-dimension world of “More DPS”, Ranger Support tends towards inadequate magnitude, long cooldowns, or effective ranges that directly conflict with their role as skirmishers.

Alongside their Pet. Most of the time our Pets simply are NOT along side us – They’re either throwing themselves into melee like maniacs or standing like statues waiting for death to come to them. And they don’t have to wait long, because the content designers’ first and final solution to creating challenge is splashing the landscape with mega-damage red circles that pets categorically fail to respond to.

The best single target and sustained damage. This is probably true, and yet… So what? Success in nearly all encounters hinges on AoE damage or spikes. “Sustained damage” is the “I have nothing better to offer” form of damage ALL professions deliver when they aren’t doing something USEFUL. Being good at standing there hacking on a billion HP World Boss is not something to be proud of. With this statement the Ranger has been defined as the ‘supreme master of mediocrity’.

Lets Whittle our Opponents! The final piece of the philosophy neatly sums up everything that is WRONG with the Ranger profession – a class that must employ mediocre damage to slowly take tiny cuts out of their opponents, while leveraging mediocre survivability, exerting mediocre positional control, contributing mediocre support skills, and saddled with a less than mediocre class mechanic.

The Real Outcome. Its not that the final result is unplayable. You can still go and indulge in basic abnegation out on the landscape. Its that that Rangers are boring and dull, responding poorly to the slightest difficulty when compared to other professions.

Zatoichi.1049:

Aioros.4862:

Yeah, it’s too soon to have answers, but this kind of shows how high ranger hopes are on the results of this CDI. XD

So true, so true

I think you’re confusing “high hopes” with “desperation”.

Most of these proposals amount to beating our heads against the wall for a year or more now, but trotting them out one last time in the belief that maybe we’ll see a little developer cogitation this go-round.

Our posts will all get read. I believe that. That’s what CDIs are all about. But this topic in particular deserves a little bit of feedback.

The day is young and I don’t expect responses for another few hours, but I’m already a bit disappointed that the Primer for the discussion is all of about 3 sentences describing a philosophical goal for Rangers that is almost entirely untrue in reality. I’m disappointed that one of the few responses we have seen amounts to an Open Admission that they’ve had their fingers in their ears about Ranger concerns since approximately forever.

Ahhh. We needed a test of whether tangent-at-best posts would be culled.

baseking.7926:

lol here we go with people want to see their character butt. If you want to see some butt go watch porn because i like how GW2 don’t have girls in all sexual armour like with Scarlet Blade or SWTOR. Please ANet keep all sexual stuff away from this game.

If you think wearing anything shorter than a full coat is sexual, getting out and walking around town must be a positively lewd experience for you.

Or somehow you’re posting from the 18th century .

Wearing a blouse or shirt instead of a trench coat in not exactly crumpling the bounds of decency as we know them. They put a lot of effort into the patterns on the medium armor pants, and for the most part it’s wasted effort.

My suggestion made months ago was add a checkbox to the Coat slot as seen with Helmets, Shoulders, & Gloves. Only this check box doesn’t remove the coat entirely, it just turns off the below-the-belt elements on those pieces where there’s a clear cut-off point.

Oh god… Is this whole disrupt the leylines exercise of Scarlet’s the ol’ “But if I destroy all magic, the Elder Dragons will starve and die! (and then you’ll all love me)” strategy?

Brought to you by an Engineer, naturally…

BEASTMASTERY IS A TRAIT LINE, NOT THE WHOLE PROFESSION…
Rangers have a massive number of companion-based traits scattered across all five trait lines. Some highly-regarded professions can perform well with minimal attention paid to their class mechanic (Guardians) or specialize for passive rewards while ignoring their class mechanic (Warriors). Conversely, Ranger builds are like dancers in a mine-field if they want to avoid added dependence on their companions. Pet-based traits need to be re-aligned, with investment in Beastmastery the clear choice for pet-based play.

Taming Lions (and other dangerous hobbies)
Several traits can be combined or eliminated.

• Fortifying bond. The Ranger and pet together represent “one player’s worth of heroic effort”. This trait is now an automatic feature gained by all Rangers.
• Rending Attacks/Stability Training/Intimidation Training. These traits are combined into a single “Specialized Training” trait. Requiring multiple traits because you equip companions from two different breeds is excessive.
• Pet’s Prowess & Expertise Training. These traits are combined into a single master-tier Beastmastery trait. These traits favor different breeds. Combining them allows mix-&-match breeds with lower opportunity cost.

Stay Between The Lines. The Lines Are Your Friends.
The majority of pet-based traits should be found in the 5th trait line (Beastmaster).

• Empathic Bond. Becomes a master-tier Beastmastery trait, reducing the ‘trait tax’ associated with this crucial ability from 30 to 20.
• Carnivorous Appetite. Becomes a master-tier Beastmastery trait.
• Concentration/Shout Mastery. These traits swap places, gathering pet-traits in Beastmastery and shout-traits in Nature Magic.

Those Aren’t Holes… They’re Opportunities!
The above steps create several gaps in the Ranger trait array. These holes would need to be filled with new effects, hopefully enhancing the diversity and effectiveness of our weapons or utility skills. While this represents additional work before the process could be considered complete, its work that should bring the Ranger more in line with expected performance levels and increase competitive build diversity.

CoffeeMug.9540:

This is a proposal written by Nike (the leader of DnT, not the other Nike who is posting in this thread) who can’t post because of his temp ban for the forum.

I believe we are ALL relived to know there are not two of me .

Proposal Overview
This can be a replacement for Underground Facility that will both be skill testing and more popular than UF

One of the worst problems of the living story has been the habit of taking away content every bit as fast as it introduces it. I think proposal this hits on an interesting piece of ‘lost content’ to revive via fractals, but I’d rather fix issues with the Underground Fractal rather than create another case of content-removal .

Associated Risks

• Masochists who actually like the Dredge fractal get upset that the Dredge was removed for a wholly superior experience.

Oddly enough, yes, I am one of them. The Dredge fractal, at least up through the late 20s, generally strikes me as one of the more interesting fractals simply because its not “hit them all till they are all dead” in its major encounters.

Too long? Probably.
Irredeemable? No, definitely not.

Riko.1309:

Associated Risks:
Making your playerbase happy has no risks.

This is so not true .

However, I doubt it will be the undoing of your specific proposal.

• Pressure Plates
  Lower the amount of dredge in the room, or completely remove their ability to respawn, allowing groups to clean the room and then channel.

I would say this is entirely missing the point. This encounter is an durability test with a dash of coordination – yes, a type of challenge so infrequent in the game players often have no idea what they’re looking at. Removing the respawns makes it yet another exercise in pure DPS. The door might as well just pop open the moment you kill them all, because all pretext of there being a puzzle or any sort of strategy requirement would be gone.

CONSUMABLES SHOULD BE SHARED
With Rangers’ high reliance on their pets for complimentary support or reinforcing their own chosen role, pets should benefit from any consumables the Ranger uses.

No Ordinary Dog Chow
Pets should inherently duplicate any consumable buffs their master acquires – when a certain percentage of Ranger functionality is expected to be coming from their pets, having the pet not benefit creates a clear disparity between Rangers and professions that operate as a single being. The current situation is equivalent to Warrior burst skills ignoring Power from food or a Guardian’s virtues not being updated after eating. Plus the image of a Ranger sharing a portion of his meal with his trusted pet is simply too cute to ignore. Submit to the cute. You know you want to.

Fluffy! Don’t Eat that!
While a straight copy of the consumable effects is both simple to understand and easy to plan tactics around, its possible that pets would gain too much proportional benefit due to the lower base values for their attributes. If this is problematic, a common scaling factor can likely be determined and applied. There are also a number of foods which have no practical effect when applied to an NPC (e.g. proc on dodge; magic find). There will be both favorites and less ideal choices that emerge from this change, which could cause a shift in Ranger eating habits .

Allie Murdock.8152:

Nuzt.7894:

I can see your concern here but, the option to have the pet as such an integral part of the class is one of the largest faults of the class. Could it not be optional to have the pet as an option, basically if you spec wilderness survival your pet becomes a larger part of the class, if you choose to spec in something different to be more valuable to your group then either you don’t have the pet or it has minimal impact on the class.

That is completely valid feedback that I will relay to the designers. Thanks for taking the time to share it!

This CANNOT be news to the designers. Scaling back Ranger reliance on Pets has been put forward in the Ranger forums so many times that it likely averages out to once every other day since the game launched.

I realize that compared to a CDI, our efforts in that forum have been largely wasting our digital breath, but this hurts. I really feel like in regards to Rangers the Balance Team has built up considerable credibility gap. We have been told time and again that things will get better, that experiments are being conducted, that change is on the way. And yet core failings have plagued this class since day one, unchanged and seemingly impervious to any tangible improvement.

I hope that if the Devs come out of this thread with anything, it’s a sense of urgency. More than 90% of the responding players listed Rangers as troubled. More than 50% listed them as the single most troubled profession in the game. The elephant in the room in now squarely in the spotlight.

Validate the faith and the patience we’ve put in you. Please.

ASCENDED PETS
With so much of the Profession’s functionality bound up in their companion, Rangers need a way overcome the Gear Progression gap introduce with the Ascended Tier by extending the Tier to their most important slot: their pets.

A Ranger’s Journey
Ascended Pets would represent the culmination of a long series of repeatable activities or challenges, comparable to the effort in creating a Vision Crystal. Ideally these paths/tasks would be distinctly Ranger-themed. Completing these tasks would allow you to select one of your existing companions and permanently upgrade it to Ascended status, with a small graphical tag in the pet management panel to identify promoted companions. This would give a 5% increase to base damage and all stats for the pet – the same benefits Ascended gear offers Player Characters.

A Long Road to Walk
Unfortunately, promoting your entire roster of companions could take a very long time. However, this is comparable to the effort all heroes face trying to collect a wide range of weapons or stat combinations for multiple builds.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Topic Title: Updates to Fractal Currency and items
…
Add New Items to the Fractal Vendor

• Amulets – 2000 fractal Relics
• Earrings/trinkets – 1900 Fractal Relics
• Dragonite ore – 5 Fractal Relics
• Bloodstone Dust – 5 Fractal Relics
• Empyreal Fragments – 5 Fractal Relics
• Add a simple white 20 slot bag to the vendor – 100 Fractal Relics
• Add Fractal Weapon Boxes to the vendor. – 5000 Fractal Relics
• Add the Fractal Tonic to the Vendor – 15000 Fractal Relics
• Add Fine infusions to the Vendor. – 3500 Fractal Relics

Add a Currency Exchange Vendor to Fractals.

• Fractal tokens for laurels. 100 Fractal Relics for 1 Laurel
• Fractal tokens for Karma jugs. 1 Fractal Relics per 10 Karma Point. A Jug of 6000 Karma = 600 relics.
• Fractal tokens for Guild Influence. 1 Fractal Relic per 10 Influence pts.
• Ring Exchange: 3 Rings for 1.
• Ring Exchange: 1 Ring for 5 Pristine Fractal Relics.

A TON of good thoughts there. I’d quibble over a few of the selected ratios (and I actively don’t want to see fractals be a one stop shopping center for all three components of Vision Crystals…) but the direction of your proposal is excellent.

I’d just mention that you could make more tier-influenced rewards by mixing fractal relics and a certain number of Vials, Globs, or Crystalized Essence in the same way that some Ascended Gear is bought with a mix of Laurels AND Ectoplasm. For example you might reduce the number of relics needed for a Fractal Weapon Box but add that you also need 3 Crystalized Essences. Plodding along at low difficulty levels will still get you there… eventually, but really you should spend some time in the higher difficulty bands to get the requisite essence.

My top three fractal concerns:
1. Enduring Value for Local Currencies
Too many of the rewards at the fractals vendors are “Got it, I’m done now” items – several BiS options and even 20-slot bags do not have enough replay value for an environment built around a “bottomless dungeon”. Skill point tomes and Obsidian Shards help, but Fine Crafting Material boxes as seen at the Laurel vendors would create huge outlets for fractal relics. Offer +1 agony infusions & possibly Thermocatalytic Reagents directly from the vendor with Fractal Relics. Consumables is another long lasting approach, such as Fractal Slaying potions with rapidly escalating prices as the bonuses increase and something that occupies the food buff slot, giving +5 AR for a hour. These would give players more ways to expend their currency while pressing on to the highest difficulty levels. Finally, recognize that there are FIVE fractal specific currencies including the Vials, Globs, and Crystallized Mist Essences. With those last three being highly dependent on difficulty level, its possible to gate the most prestigious rewards/purchases like Fractal Weapon Skins behind a mix of fractal relics and Mist Essence, allowing low difficulty players to advance very slowly, while high difficulty players can amass sufficient “funds” in a fractal-er, fraction of the time .

2. Bragging Rights and Broader Promotion
High level fractal delvers need more choices for visual distinction. Rewards based on specific accomplishments, not RNG. Titles, armor, unique mini-pets and a second round of weapons exclusive to the greatest depths. Like Liadri, Fractal players need challenges that they can prove they’ve beaten to other player via in-game evidence rather than just making claims in chat. These players should be walking bill-boards advertising that the Fractals both exist and are something cool that all players should at least try out.

3. Reliable Release Cadence
Fractals Deserve to have a similar commitment to steady development as seen in the Living Story. Be it 4 times a year, 3 times a year, or even twice a year, set calendar dates for Fractal-oriented releases and stick to them. Build both confidence and excitement as players begin to murmur “Oooo, new wave of fractals coming up, I wonder what it’ll be this time?” Use the release to both polish existing fractals and tune the support mechanisms along with the center-stage offering of additional scenarios and/or new difficulty bands opening up.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

How does this affect the market? I’ll use my own personal example. I’ve lost hundreds of Gold from holding onto the Monocle headpieces. Something that was uber rare, and not dropping anymore, tanked from 600+ Gold per, to less than 150 Gold within the span of a few hours while I was asleep. Same thing happened with the Jetpack skin.

Out of curiosity, how much did you pay for them?

To a degree, it sounds like counting your winning while you’re still sitting at the table – part of that gold was strictly potential earnings.

Romo.3709:

Asia Skyly.7198:

• The Marionette.

How would you possibly make a world boss encounter that required an entire map to complete into a 5 men battle? I see other ones you listed as potentially fun levels, but Marionette? Not so much.

I’ve envisioned it as a boss fractal with~

90 seconds in lane 1 then your whole party on the matching platform with 60 seconds to fight Warden I, then…

90 seconds in lane 2 then your whole party on the matching platform with 60 seconds to fight Warden II, then…

90 seconds in lane 3 then your whole party on the matching platform with 60 seconds to fight Warden III, then…

90 seconds in lane 4 then your whole party on the matching platform with 60 seconds to fight Warden IV, then…

90 seconds in lane 5 then your whole party on the matching platform with 60 seconds to fight Warden V, then… Loot!

Possibly with fake adventurer NPCs on the other platforms who automatically win or fail along with you just to maintain that sense of scale. It uses everything about the fight, just in smaller doses.

Fail to kill a Warden in time, letting enough enemies slip by to charge the Marionette, or any party wipe at any point resets everything. Basically 12-15 minutes of kicking butt .

timmyf.1490:

Create “Practice Mode Fractals” which allow newer players to learn the encounters one Fractal at a time, making it easier for players to get started.

timmyf.1490:

…this is the scenario I’m thinking about:

I want to train my guildmates so if they PUG and get Dredge, they know what to do.

Ahh. Ok. Still going with a second platform for a moment just so regular/veteran users can ignore it. Put a second “well” over on the second platform and when you click it you see a menu of fractals & instabilities and A GIANT WARNING THAT YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET LOOT FOR THIS RUN. Huge warning. Boldface even. Red letters if possible. Unfarmable.

Its a little strange, but it might be useful for training folks, particularly at higher dificulties. Or maybe as some sort of private lounge for role-players.

timmyf.1490:

Create “Practice Mode Fractals” which allow newer players to learn the encounters one Fractal at a time, making it easier for players to get started.

Would you consider some sort of written overview and/or miniature models of the fractals that can be viewed from the Mistlock Observatory map a working alternative? Maybe a second platform you can walk across a bridge to where you then have some in-game guidance you can browse without things trying to kill you?

Because the level of flame-resistant protective gear required for a Dev to safely touch that topic requires longer to put on that the stuff the Devs hosting the other threads are wearing .

About All Those Rings…

Something to keep in mind with the pink Rings that drop in the Fractals – these were the first Ascended Gear offered and the time scale/commitment required to get pink BiS gear has been refined considerably since then. They simply are NOT on the same scale of value with most other Ascended gear. They still drop with stunning regularity and you can even buy your exact preferred choice with a very modest number of runs. The fact any Fractal Frequenter player has so many should tell you they aren’t worth much. Moreover, ArenaNet can’t just go back and lower the drop rate to give them some value – the horse has left the barn and it took multiple bank-tabs worth of rings with it before it left.

Second, the Economics Team fights a non-stop battle with the many, many gold faucets in the game, and turning left over rings and all future extra rings into coin is basically the least desirable of all possible transactions.

What I would suggest is allowing them to be exchanged for something of value, but NOT coin. Perhaps swap them for one of the random Fine Materials boxes currently available from the Laurel Vendors. Or maybe 1, 2, or 3 unidentified dyes per ring. This way the player can then sell the reward for coin if they choose, but they aren’t putting more coin into the system by doing so.

Asko.4120:

Believe me, I’ve tried facetanking it with a full pvt/soldier armor on a guardian and it lead nowhere. even through all the guardian blocks the dredge can still nuke ppl at 49 or old scale48. Also, facetanking is not fun but active defenses like dodging would be :P

Then possibly something needs to be done about the scaling of the enemies or their attacks. But making the fight more like every other fight (Dodge and Dodge again…) isn’t the answer. We have desperately thin variety in high level gameplay. Lets work to preserve the handful of quirky outliers while fixing the places where the numbers just don’t add up .

Asko.4120:

Associated Risks
I see no risk in making the changes above.

Somewhere, a Game-Design Faerie shrieks and falls down dead every time someone says ‘these changes are risk-free’ .

The pressure plates_ – we know how the puzzle is intended to be done, but due to the endlessly respawning dredge and not being able to dodge while standing on a pressure plate the final room is unnecessarily sensitive to errors (more than would be reasonable). Suggestion: make the pressure plates in the last room significantly larger so that you could dodge on them without making the console reset.

While I agree with your sentiment on the Bomb and Clown-Car fights, I’ll point out that the Pressure Plate battle is one of the few places in the entire game where glass-cannons are not rewarded out of all proportion with any other build. It’s not that the fight is hard per se, but that the encounter actually calls for 2 characters to be able to withstand a bit of a beating without relying on dodge-spam. That also makes it one of the few places where Support can make a difference. Knockbacks, interrupts, mass-Aegis, strong healing… If the enemies weren’t Drege this would also be a amazing fight for anyone with AoE blinds.

In this case I think that the fight needs to be better explained to the players (Readable sign outside the gates?) and possibly some environmental weapons added that can be picked up by the heroes who will stand on the pads that give them better tools to perform their role. Like a Big-Honkin’ Drege Riot Shield that gives you good hold-your ground-skills on buttons 1-4 (dropped by pushing button 5).

In other words don’t make it more easy, make it more fun .

DevonCarver.5370:

The Edge of the Mists features numerous changes to the standard WvW mechanics.The most notable changes are: Scoring on capture of objectives, scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs, unique bosses at each objective, increased emphasis on verticality, more chokepoints, a much shorter match time, and destructible terrain. Of the changes included, which would you like to see implemented in the standard WvW maps?

Is it wrong to respond~

D. All of the above

Ok, shorter match times might not be helpful, but it does seem like there’s a lot of philosophical evolution has taken place between the creation of the current Borderlands and the Edge of the Mists.